Case study
Suenami Industrial Co., Ltd. · Precision Sheet Metal Fabrication
AI quoting across large volumes of drawings, plus AI agents, ends reliance on individual know-how and speeds up quoting
Challenges before ARCHAIVE
- — ARCHAIVE teamThank you for taking the time today. To start, what challenges did you face before introducing ARCHAIVE?
- Suenami representative
The biggest was how complex quoting was, and how much it depended on specific people. We handle a lot of drawings, and it was not unusual to receive requests for 100 to 150 at once. Quoting relied heavily on my own “feel and experience”, which made it hard to train new employees or to handle quotes when I was away.
Calculating quotes by hand took time, so we could not respond quickly. Even AI-generated quotes ultimately needed a human check, and we wanted them to be more accurate and reliable.
Why Suenami chose ARCHAIVE
- — ARCHAIVE teamWith those challenges, what made you choose us in the end?
- Suenami representative
There were several deciding factors. While other companies told us it could not be done, STAR UP took the problem on, saying “it might be possible”. Sensing the potential for AI to get close to our own way of calculating quotes was a big part of it.
The flexibility of development and the speed of response were also major factors. We valued how quickly they listened to customers and reflected that in the system.
- — ARCHAIVE teamWe are glad you value our speed.
- Suenami representative
Yes. Hearing that STAR UP’s development team ships updates twice a month based on user feedback also gave me confidence in how they work.
Results after introducing ARCHAIVE
- — ARCHAIVE teamNow that you have introduced it, what results have you seen?
- Suenami representative
First, AI now supports our complex quoting work. We are especially looking forward to “AI agent”-style features, where you simply upload a drawing and the AI works out a quote with you in conversation, drawing on past history and trouble records. Being able to process many drawings at once and export rough quotes as a CSV is already making our work more efficient.
We are also looking forward to a feature that learns from our existing Excel data and our own calculation logic, so it can automatically produce market-based quotes covering material, machining and outsourcing costs.